


Before the Three-Day Weekend

by astrid_fischer



Series: 'le révolutionnaire', an a.b.c. press publication [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Modern Era, Newspaper!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/pseuds/astrid_fischer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Eponine and Courfeyrac involve themselves in things that are not really their business (but it's probably for the best), Joly cannot copy-edit, it's a wonder anything ever gets done, really, and Enjolras makes an apology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Three-Day Weekend

It takes Enjolras the whole day to realize that Grantaire is upset with him.

And even then, he doesn’t so much _realize_ it, per se, as much as Eponine smacks him upside the head with a rolled-up magazine and tells him flat out.

“You’re fired,” he informs her, grabbing the magazine away. His fingers dig into the glossy paper as he glances over his shoulder to where Grantaire is talking jovially with Courfeyrac and Bossuet in the far corner. He does not look like someone who considers himself in any way wronged. “And what do you mean, he’s mad at me?”

“Are you _serious?_ _”_ Eponine demands. _“_ Do you not remember what happened earlier?”

“What happened earlier?” he asks her, deadpan.

He’s had to make more phone calls than he can count in the last two hours alone—to their distributor, to the printer, to a half-dozen independent bookstores—and giving out the distribution assignments was the usual nightmare, while Grantaire slept on Joly’s desk (because Joly’s was the closest to the window, and therefore the warmest in the afternoon when sun spilled over it) and Joly and Bossuet sat cross-legged on top of _Grantaire’s_ desk eating animal crackers and doing the crossword puzzle in the back of Pop! Magazine.

Courfeyrac had allowed Jehan to put tiny braids into his floppy hair during lunch, and Eponine had hung over the fire escape for half an hour angrily shouting things back and forth with the youngest of her father’s sketchy minions, the long-eyelashed one who thought it was cool to wear a top hat on a daily basis.

They’d gotten in eleven and a half of the thirty-one articles needed for next week’s issue, which, considering it was a Friday afternoon, wasn’t that bad.

Enjolras suspects, though, that none of this is what Eponine is referring to.

She doesn’t answer at once, and he says with audible exasperation, “ _Eponine_.”

The girl holds up one finger. “Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out which object on my desk will be most satisfying to hit you with.”

He raises his eyebrows and gives her his most unamused look.

She sighs and flops back in her chair, putting her booted feet up on the desk. “You yelled at him.”

“I yelled at all of you,” Enjolras corrects, “Because you were acting like children.”

“Have _one_ paper-snowball fight and no one lets you forget it,” Bahorel interjects in a grievously-wronged sort of way as he walks past carrying the stack of dusty back-issues (which, following the aforementioned paper snowball fight, the editor had sentenced him to organize chronologically).

Courfeyrac appears out of nowhere to sit himself on the front of Eponine’s desk, and Enjolras gives him a hard look. “I hope you came over here to tell me that the three articles you were meant to have in five hours ago are finished, Courfeyrac.”

“You yelled at all of us, but you were hardest on him,” Courfeyrac says, every bit as if he had actually been invited into the conversation. “And to impress upon you the seriousness of the situation, I am not _even_ going to make that into an innuendo.”

He and Eponine high-five without looking at each other and Enjolras considers whether, in the long run, he would regret punching Courfeyrac in the face.

The editor checks surreptitiously over one shoulder to make sure that the subject of their conversation is still safely in the opposite corner with Bossuet, because he can think of few punishments worse than Grantaire overhearing this particular dialogue.

“That was—Eponine, for the hundredth time, _answer your phone or shut it off._ ”

His copy-editor makes a rude face at him and digs her ringing phone out of her jeans pocket, swinging her legs down from the desk and pushing her chair back so she can go take the call over by the window.

“We get that you’re going to yell at us when we’re idiots.” Courfeyrac shatters Enjolras’ hope that the conversation might have finished with Eponine’s departure. “We deserve it. But it was Feuilly who started that fight, and Bahorel who made the desk fortress.”

Enjolras has to close his eyes for a moment at the mention of the desk fortress.

“You still blamed R,” Courfeyrac goes on in a matter-of-fact undertone, his grey eyes flicking to where Grantaire is still conferring with Bossuet in the corner. “I don’t even know if you realized you were doing it.”

“Can anyone go pick Marius up?” Eponine asks the office at large, interrupting Enjolras’ forthcoming protestation. “He’s locked the keys in his car and his wallet with them.”

“Make Cosette do it,” Bossuet answers, wrinkling his nose.

“She’s at work at the Cluny.”

“Ma’ Coutheyrah do i’,” Joly says around the tongue depressor in his mouth (because he’s very nearly positive that he’s coming down with the flu).

“I’m busy,” says Courfeyrac, who has conjured his black Ray Bans from somewhere and is now wearing them while he lounges on the desk and grins at Enjolras’ stormy expression.

“I’ve got it this time,” Combeferre volunteers calmly from the floor by Enjolras’ desk, where he’s unrolled his purple yoga mat and is coming out of half-lotus. “Tell him to give me ten minutes.”

Eponine conveys the message to Marius, and Enjolras pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger to stave off the headache threatening at his temples.

“Anyway,” Eponine says, resuming her seat and fixing Enjolras with a determined glare as she picks up tormenting him right where she’s left off. “It’s like you haven’t noticed that he’s trying. Like nothing’s changed since before you guys got together.”

“You’re acting as if I’ve been a monster to him,” Enjolras says, and he can hear the defensiveness in his own voice now but he’s tired of this, because there’s no one he cares about more than these assholes and how can they not know that by now?

“You aren’t a monster at all. You’ve just been tolerating him, like you used to,” Eponine says, and points her index finger at him in accusation. “And _you_ have no idea what it is like to just be _tolerated_ by someone you care about, vest boy, none at all.”

Enjolras is torn between amusement and extreme annoyance. “ _What_ did you just call me—?”

“And now you think that you can still treat him the same as you used to all day and go home with him at night, happy as clams, and expect him to be fine,” she interrupts him in a heated whisper, because _no one_ interrupts like Eponine when she’s on a roll. “You are his _boyfriend_ now—”

“I am _not_ —” Enjolras starts indignantly, and feels his face go as red as his vest.

“—and I know you care about him, we all know that, but you might try _showing_ it every now and then. We’re not _all_ made of stone.”

He shakes his head and looks down at her in bemused amazement. “Does it at any point even enter your head that you’re talking to the person who employs you?”

She smirks at him. “Go ahead, fire me. Publish 800 copies of a paper whose tagline says ‘ _will you join in our crufsade’_.”

Enjolras sighs and rubs one eyebrow. “Please tell me that’s a hypothetical.”

“You really shouldn’t let Joly proofread anymore,” Courfeyrac says, shaking his head. “But that’s not the point.”

“That’s always the point,” Eponine says. “But the _other_ point is, Grantaire.” She points a pen at the editor. “If you can honestly tell me, thinking back on how you treated him today, you don’t feel badly about it, I’ll drop it. I swear.”

And Enjolras realizes uncomfortably that maybe, possibly, she’s right. He vaguely remembers asking Grantaire why he was even in the office today, if he was just going to make smart remarks and not contribute anything.

And now that he’s remembered he said it, he supposes that no, he doesn’t feel particularly good about it.

“He must know I didn’t mean any of that,” Enjolras says, but there’s a trace of uncertainty in his voice now.

He’s greeted with two level stares and a very pointed silence.

The ancient clock on the wall chimes to inform them that it’s nine o’clock, and Enjolras clears his throat and tells everyone that it’s time to head out, and that he’ll see them all Tuesday morning.

There’s a general shuffling of papers and reaching for mittens and jackets while Feuilly makes his way around hitting ‘sleep’ on all the computers and Bossuet collects the day’s trash to take downstairs with him.

Grantaire has to pass by Enjolras to retrieve his hideous green-and-yellow scarf from his own desk, and he smiles and winks at the blonde man on his way past.

The editor wonders with a pang of guilt how it is that he hasn’t noticed all day that the smile doesn’t meet Grantaire’s eyes.

He catches Grantaire’s arm as he pulls on his grey fingerless gloves. “Grantaire,” he starts, but the other man doesn’t hold his gaze as he claps Enjolras on the shoulder and says cheerfully, “I have to beg off tonight, Bossuet and Joly have invited me to the most _delight_ _ful_ sounding little pub in the Marais. You don’t mind, do you?”

Enjolras tells him that of course he doesn’t mind, and he’ll see him tomorrow, but his eyes stay on Grantaire’s back as the dark-haired man walks back to rejoin Bossuet, who is standing and patiently allowing Joly to wind an absurdly long red scarf around and around his neck.

When Enjolras turns back he sees Courfeyrac smirking and Eponine sitting with her arms folded and eyebrows raised. “Nope,” Courfeyrac mouths, “He’s not mad at you at _all_.”

Eponine adds, with a truly terrifying glare, “You had _better not_ let him walk out of this office.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says aloud, giving them both a freezing look. “Would you mind staying after for just a moment?”

Grantaire turns back to him, mild surprise showing in his brown eyes. He shrugs and motions for Bossuet and Joly to go. Most everyone else has already cleared out.

“Our cue, I think,” Eponine says under her breath to Courfeyrac, then whistles to Gavroche, who's been at the office since he got out of primary at two o'clock and is currently playing Angry Birds on Grantaire’s MacBook. “Come on, brat. Work up some tears and I can get us free doughnuts on the way home.”

Gavroche whoops excitedly and hops up onto the desk so that his sister can hoist him under one arm. Eponine tips her newsboy cap to Enjolras and gives him the smuggest grin imaginable on her way past.

“Still fired,” he mutters to her, and she blows him a kiss with her free hand.

Courfeyrac shrugs on his leather jacket and winks at the editor as he follows Eponine out, leaving Grantaire and Enjolras alone in the office.

Enjolras often forgets how _quiet_ the A.B.C. Press can be, once everyone’s gone. It’s just the ticking of the clock and the creak of the floorboards and the faint sound of traffic on the Rue St. Michel downstairs.

Grantaire doesn't wait for him to speak, but heaves a dramatic sigh and spreads his arms wide. “Go on, then, do your worst. What have I done now? Out with it quickly, you know how much Bossuet whines when he’s kept waiting.”

“You’re upset,” Enjolras says. He doesn’t phrase it as a question, and he doesn’t miss the way Grantaire’s smile falters, just a little. It's clear this isn't what he was expecting. As ever, he recovers quickly.

“I am incapable of being upset,” he says, and puts a hand to his chest. “I’m frankly insulted at the very suggestion.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, voice soft, and Grantaire closes his eyes briefly. “It’s not important,” he says quietly, turning his knit beanie over in his hands. “I’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”

“But you’re not now,” Enjolras says. Grantaire doesn’t move away from him, but his shoulders set as the blonde man approaches.

Grantaire groans and rubs at the back of his neck. “It’s late. There is a very good chance Joly will actually purchase alcohol _for_ me. Do we have to get into this right now?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says simply, and catches one of Grantaire’s hands in his, brushing his thumb over the other man’s knuckles. His gaze is, as usual, direct and unavoidable. “I owe you an apology.”

“It’s not important,” Grantaire maintains, still taking great care to sound untroubled. “If I thought it was, I wouldn’t have pretended to be asleep when you gave out assignments.”

Enjolras stares at him, but Grantaire’s expression—normally so easy to read—is inscrutable. “You weren’t asleep?” Enjolras asks, momentarily derailed from his quest to apologize.

“No,” the other man says with a half-smile, and his gaze flickers back to meet the blonde’s. “Thought it would be easier. Would it have made a difference if you’d known?”

Enjolras regards him for a moment. He doesn’t insult him by lying. “For the sake of argument, I trust you remember what happened _last_ time I sent you on a business errand?”

“Yes, I know,” Grantaire huffs, rolling his eyes heavenward. “There was gambling, it was disgraceful, you were _very_ put out.” The look he gives Enjolras next is a challenge. “We still got the ad space, didn’t we?”

And yes, of course, they had.

Enjolras doesn’t know how it’s possible that it’s taken him this long to realize what someone else should never have had to tell him. Subconsciously, he _has_ still been treating Grantaire like nothing has changed, like he’s still the drunk liability he hasn’t been in weeks.

He realizes it now, hearing the disguised hurt in Grantaire’s voice as he tells Enjolras that he knows he wouldn’t have been given an assignment whether or not he was awake, and Enjolras is frankly ashamed that someone else (first Eponine, and now Grantaire) has had to point it out to him.

“You think I don’t trust you,” he says aloud. Grantaire’s sardonic expression is answer enough, and Enjolras shakes his head. “Is that it?”

“I don’t need you to patronize me,” Grantaire says, and there’s an edge to his voice now as he tries to pull his hand away.

But Enjolras doesn’t relax his grip. Instead he takes hold of Grantaire’s other hand as well, twining their fingers together and backing the dark-haired man up against the desk behind him.  

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says, and his smile is soft as he dips his head to brush his nose along Grantaire’s jawline. Grantaire’s breath catches in his throat, but his lips twist into a smirk. “Maybe I’m not that easy,” he says loftily, attempting to squirm away from the other man’s grip.

But then Enjolras says something else, murmurs it like a secret to the quiet room, and Grantaire goes very still.

They’re the same words Grantaire has told him so many times, as if they’re the most obvious thing in the world, as if they don’t even need to be said (but he still needs to say them).

Hearing them from Enjolras' mouth about stops Grantaire's heart.

“What did you say?” Grantaire whispers, and in this moment with his tousled hair and wide eyes he looks somehow very young and very vulnerable.

And Enjolras lifts his head and smiles, raising their joined hands and brushing his thumb over the other man’s cheek with something so sweet in his blue eyes that it makes Grantaire’s chest hurt.

“I said, I believe in you.”

Grantaire tries again to tug his hands free of the other man’s, and this time Enjolras lets him, watching with a careful sort of expression.

He needn’t have worried. Grantaire takes hold of Enjolras’ unknotted tie (because really, the man is constantly in a state of undress) and pulls him in for a fierce, almost desperate kiss, lips and teeth and the scrape of stubble on smooth skin.

The kiss goes on for some time. Then he rests his forehead against the blonde man’s and closes his eyes, black lashes stark against pale skin.

“Say it again,” Grantaire insists, breathless.

And Enjolras does.

**Author's Note:**

> (I am probably guilty of giving the impression that the ABCs never actually do any work -- I promise, they do. Enjolras wouldn't put up with them otherwise (and it's a Friday before a long weekend, honestly, what do you expect?).)


End file.
